Washington Post headline sounds like Fox "News"
Head buries the accuser and the story's significance
This headline below from the online version of the Washington Post on Friday, Oct. 24 needs an entire rewrite:
The Post’s version makes it sound like there is merit in the accusation from a one-time co-founder ousted from Wikipedia by the existing co-founder the year after it was created in 2001. In fact, the Post wound up rewriting it themselves to something bound to be even more pleasing to right-wing conspiracy theorists. Saturday’s version of the headline:
A Wikipedia cofounder is fueling the right’s campaign against it
The subhead fans the partisan flames further:
Is the world’s biggest online encyclopedia a bastion of wokeness? Co-founder Larry Sanger thinks so, and his claims of mismanagement are being embraced on the right.
By asking a question — like Fox “News” commentators used to like to say — and handing the accuser the entire forum, the subhead leaves readers with the impression there is merit to the claims.
The evident bias continues in the story, which devotes the first and last thirds of the story to the ousted co-founder’s claims, and includes a smidge in the middle for a statement from the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation.
Why is this important? The right — formerly known as the extreme right, when there were such things as conservatives in the party — wants to control all media to continue forming the alternative reality they crave and believe in.
To do that, the party of white nationalism must denigrate truth and destroy facts so that eventually they can write a new reality — albeit a false one, of course — and claim only they know the truth, only they present facts and that anyone claiming otherwise is the enemy, who should also be destroyed.
This is their game plan.
It’s being played out right in front of us.
Maybe the solution to all this fascist nonsense is to accept that MAGA world needs its own country where they can forget about health care, truthful education, and parade around with their guns and wives in invisible chains as they worship the orange idiot. The rest of us want out of this mess. America is not one country anymore. And it’s more than two as well. Maybe 5 or even 6. Let’s just skip to the end and let the crazies devour each other in their absurdist macho fantasy land.